Staging Welfare: Writing Animal Machines

This chapter uses Harrison’s personal archives to reconstruct the writing process leading up to Animal Machines. It argues that Animal Machines was as much an environmentalist and consumer-oriented book as it was about animal welfare. Harrison wrote Animal Machines between 1961 and 1964. During this period, she read scientific publications on animal behaviour, visited British farms, and corresponded with manufacturers, parliamentarians, and other campaigners—the most prominent of whom was the environmentalist Rachel Carson. Hardly any of her findings were novel. Animal Machines’ impact was instead based on Harrison’s ability to effectively stage existing concerns about intensive farming and technological alienation from nature alongside new ethology-informed concepts of animal welfare. Harrison mobilised anecdotal and scientific evidence as well as visual material to create a powerful moral contrast between a threatened romanticised countryside and a desensitised dystopian future characterised by the “factory farm.”

Philosophy of ecologized economics

The ecological crisis goes a long way back and has been brewing for centuries. The main factors of human alienation from nature: technical progress; suppression of pagan culture, that used to be tied to nature, world religions; spread of atheism; consolidation of the positivism paradigm in scientific methodology; triumph of the market economy model. As a result, humans were pulled out of their natural environment. They live and work by rhythms and rules contradicting natural laws. The result is the growing global crisis of industrial civilization.

Responding to the Natural World

This chapter seeks to help social workers adopt a wider eco-centric perspective which affirms human connectedness to the natural world, with a dual focus on ecological and social justice. It examines when, where, and how humans came to see themselves as separate and superior to the rest of nature, and the disastrous consequences now evident on a global scale. The alienation from nature is found to begin within early western civilizations and exacerbated with the growth of commerce and empires and the displacement and destruction of peoples with deep knowledge and respect for the natural world. Social workers are well placed to work at the interface between people and the wider natural environment and to embrace the knowledge and contributions of other disciplines and groups working for just causes. It is concluded that help for humans is only possible within a wider remit of care for the natural world essential to all life. A local example of ecologically informed social work is shared, helping community gardeners to grow and share food.

Alienation from Nature and Its Impact on Primary and Pre-primary Education

The alienation from nature has a major impact on the education of primary school pupils and pre-school children. In the review paper we focus on research into this phenomena. We chose 79 articles on Web of Science, 39 on Scopus, and two in the Czech database RIV. From this a total number of 21 articles were selected, analysed and presented to the readers in this article. It turned out that alienation from nature is a fuzzy concept. Many experts rely on it. But it is not precisely defined in the literature. Two main topics appeared in the articles that were considered: connectedness and relation to nature and fear of animals and disgust aroused by them. The main findings are: a) teachers and parents are already alienated, b) examples of good practice show ways of bringing nature closer to children, c) children’s attitudes to nature are changing; they are more afraid of animals and disgusted by them, d) a certain degree of fear and disgust is useful, e) differences between the sexes appear only at an older age. This phenomenon needs to be studied further. Keywords: pre-school pedagogy, primary school pedagogy, alienation from nature, generation alpha

Human-Animal Relationships in Literacy Education

This paper presents a case for the inclusion of human-animal relationships as a focus for literacy education. It outlines the ways in which language is implicated in human alienation from nature in a modern technology-focused life, and discusses the effects of nature-deficit disorder on human well-being. It calls for an ‘entangled pedagogy’ that attends to stories of local wildlife, and points to the importance of such a pedagogy for particular groups of literacy learners, including international students, new migrants and recent refugees, who may be unfamiliar with the flora and fauna of their new environment. As an example of entangled pedagogy the paper presents ideas for literacy lessons based on the iconic Australian magpie whose relationship with humans is, at times, problematic.

Human Reconnection to Nature: An Ecopsychological Appeal in Corona Time Poetry

Ecopsycology emphasizes on the intrinsic bond between humans and nature for mutual well-being. This article examines how poetry of corona time expresses human anxieties of environmental loss and sense of alienation from nature and how it makes people aware of their inherent sense of emotional attachment with natural system for their happiness, well-being and meaningful life. The objective of this paper is to investigate humans’ alienation from nature and their efforts for reconnecting to it. To achieve this, the paper evaluates the selected poems using theoretical modality of ecopsychology propounded by Theodore Roszak and Robert Greenway. As a piece of qualitative research, it incorporates interpretive and analytical approaches following the techniques of close reading of the selected texts. Along with the relevant observations of critics, the focus lies on the thematic and textual analysis of the selected poems. The findings of the research unveil that corona time poetry depicts humans’ alienation from nature as a consequence of their indifference to and domination upon it, and the only way for their well-being is reconnection to it.

Experience in Ecological Reconstruction of Cultural Landscapes (Review)

Purpose. Review of world and domestic experience of ecological reconstruction of cultural landscapes. Methods. System analysis, a method of objective assessment using photofixation. Results. The examples of successful ecological reconstruction of cultural landscapes, realized thanks to the preservation of the historical context, the concept of respect for the “genius loci” as a metaphorical subject, which retains the unique characteristics of cultural landscapes and at the same time inspires the creation of landscapes of high aesthetic expressiveness and modern functionality, are considered. Conclusions. The above examples demonstrate the unlimited potential of landscape design in overcoming human alienation from nature, in filling the urban environment with a full life, in the successful branding of cities, and, as a result, in attracting tourists and investments. Such successful modern projects of revitalization and ecological reconstruction are possible when respect for the historical heritage, the historical cultural landscape is realized, when the “genius loci” is reborn and manifests itself as a metaphorical subject, on the one hand, preserving the unique characteristics of the transformed cultural landscapes, and on the other, the inspirer of giving landscapes a high aesthetic expressiveness, concentration of beauty, modern functionality.

Natura (nie)odzyskana. Pan Knuta Hamsuna

The Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun’s outstanding early novel Pan. From Lieutenant Thomas Glahn’s Papers (1894) is often acknowledged as a manifestation of the specificity and profundity of Hamsun’s perception of nature. Contrary to the prevailing opinion, I argue that the novel’s main protagonist cannot be simply seen as the happily fulfilled “man of nature” for whom he wishes to pass. In a critical dialogue with the post-Romantic interpretations of Pan and drawing on some classic philosophical traditions (i.e. Rousseau, Schiller) as well as the modern Norwegian scholarship, I explore the psychological dimension of Hamsun’s masterpiece and present Glahn as an individual who attempts to erase or at least mystify within a personalized narrative the conflict between the objective world and his subjective perception of reality. This predicament seems essential to understanding Glahn’s character and ipso facto Hamsun’s less obvious position in the philosophical debate on the essence of modernity conceived as “Disenchantment”. By carefully following Glahn’s narratives centered on his experience of nature, I reveal their artificial and simulating character. Such a reading allows me to argue that Hamsun’s Pan concurs in a subtler language of literature with the philosophical acknowledgement, dating back to Rousseau, of the impossibility of the individual’s return to the pre-modern time, as if to the realm of original, transcendental sense and immediacy of our experience of the world. The horizons of the modern – perhaps suffice to say: mature? – historicized and highly reflexive consciousness cannot be transgressed; the Romantic sensitivity, in its naïve search for the authentic experience of nature as a source of the self and the sense, can only regain it in discourse, which amounts to positing nature as a beautiful appearance and thus compensating for one’s dramatic feeling of alienation from nature and being conceived of as a metaphysical “wholeness”.